Leaving Home
by Badger the Gnome
Summary: As she leaves the city she was born and raised in, a young Gnome bard reflects upon her past, and what she thinks of her future....


"Leaving Home" – Cyd's thoughts on her trip to Horizon

By Lady Comet

Notes: This is an account of my recent character's, Cyd Brookes, thoughts as she leaves Antioch, the city she was born and raised in. That game is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth where everything is desert and people mostly live in isolated cities. Basically, history as we know it was a lie - what really happened is that Elves and Humans kept fighting wars, eventually breeding all the other races into their own, and magic began to disappear. After the last great war the elves vanished, though there are rumors of a last Elven city that exists in another space, popping into human reality every now and again. This last war also caused an apocalypse, kick-starting the return of magic and the races that had been lost into humanity (gnomes, dwarves, etc.). To cross the desert is suicide, unless you're an adventurer, of course. As this is post-apocalyptic, there is mucho technology, and as such Cyd is a punk-singing Bard of doom. She's also a gnome, and if you want more info on her, message me. Have at it!

* * *

Somewhere along the way Cyd Brookes had forgotten how long they'd been traveling, but it didn't really matter, she supposed. It was going to take them a few days to get to Horizon no matter how much time she thought had passed. The truck didn't have any windows, so she couldn't watch the scenery to pass the time, but even that didn't really even matter. The only thing out there was sand for miles. She remembered when she was little her mother had told her that it was suicide to cross the desert. Well, hopefully they'd survive this.

It was strange, as a child all she had wanted was to escape the closeness of her community and find out about life and adventure, driven by her curiosity of the "big folk" she had been told to avoid. _Maybe,_ she thought, _that's another reason I started singing. Maybe it wasn't just because I'm good at it. Maybe I knew that I'd meet other people there and it would make life a little more exciting._

She backtracked and forced herself to remember more. If she was going to leave Antioch behind, she'd better make sure she remembered what happened there. _After all, things will probably change a lot while I'm gone._

She had never left the city in all her life. Her parents were working class, to put it nicely, so they couldn't afford to go anywhere, let alone to other cities. They both worked all the time and hated their jobs with a burning, fiery passion. Most of the time she had been cared for by other relatives and members of the community. In a way she had felt trapped in that, bitter that her parents didn't have time for her and that bitterness turned into anger and annoyance. _Strange,_ she thought, _I didn't think I was angry._ As she got older she realized she could sing really, really well, and practiced and practiced until she got even better. Somehow even as a child she had known that her voice would take her far, and by using it, she wouldn't be trapped in the life her parents had. She kept practicing but didn't look for jobs until she was a teenager. Things changed then. She must have been no older than 23 when it happened, which was definitely not a good time for it. She needed that time to figure herself out and find out who she was. But that didn't matter when her father turned up dead.

No one really told her what had happened; only that he was gone. She and her mother were alone now, and without him, they would be poorer than ever. Her mom's salary wouldn't be able to support the both of them. So she made the choice to work too, seeking out bars that would allow her to sing even though she was still a nobody. She did well, as she expected, or at least well enough to keep herself alive. Years passed, and nothing changed. Most of her time was spent working, which wasn't bad, but she missed out on a lot of normal teenage stuff. Oddly, it didn't really bother her that much. After she started her makeshift career she didn't have time for most of her friends, so asshe grew up, she had no examples of what her experiences should be like. All she really discovered about herself in those years was who she wanted to be with, which came naturally, and even so she didn't think about it much. Everything that mattered was song and what came from it. That was the way it was until she met Zig and Jade, and the Biker Queen of the Opera….

She smirked, the experience flooding back into her memory. _I was so foolish in all of that. I shouldn't have even taken the job, I don't know why I did…but if I hadn't, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have met these people and gotten started on my own path. I would probably still be living and working for Mom…_

Absentmindedly, she turned her head to watch her very odd companions. She felt differently about all of them, but still liked most of them much more than she expected she would. By choosing this she had put herself in a lot of danger, and this was a place she never thought she would end up. But she had wanted adventure, after all.

She turned her head again to stare toward the back of the truck as if she could see Antioch becoming a small dot on the horizon, and she smiled. She was risking a lot, had risked a lot, by making the choices that led her here. In the past, she might have turned back, but she was different now. Maybe this wasn't exactly what she had planned. Maybe she was going to miss her old life and its simplicity. Even so, she had gotten what she asked for, and she was going to make the best of it.


End file.
